Suspicious text message sent after beating death

EL CAJON, Calif. 
Police are trying to determine who received a suspicious text message sent from the cell phone of a slain Iraqi woman's daughter while the teen was being interviewed by detectives, according to recently released court documents.

The message read: "The detective will find out tell them cnt talk."

Details in the search warrant affidavit released this week could chip away at widespread speculation that the March 21 beating death of Shaima Alawadi was a hate crime.

Her 17-year-old daughter, Fatima Alhimidi, told reporters after the attack that she found a note by her unconscious mother that read: "Go back to your country, you terrorist."

El Cajon police Lt. Mark Coit, a spokesman, said Friday the department was not commenting on the ongoing investigation that's being assisted by the FBI.

Detectives did find a note but have not revealed its contents. The torn note was handwritten and was a copy.

The family told police a similar note was left at their home weeks before the attack, but they did not keep it or file a report with authorities.

The court papers also disclosed that Alawadi, 32, planned to divorce her husband and move to Texas, and that the daughter was distraught over her pending arranged marriage to a cousin.

In November, the teen jumped from her mother's moving car and possibly broke her arm after she was discovered by police in a car with a 21-year-old man, the records show.

Alhimidi said, "'I love you, Mom,' opened the vehicle door and jumped out while the vehicle was doing approximately 35 mph," the documents said. "Police were informed by paramedics and hospital staff that Fatima Alhimidi said she was being forced to marry her cousin and did not want to do so, (so) she jumped out of the vehicle."

Alawadi's brother said he has not drawn any conclusions about the identity of the killer based on the newly released details.

"I want people to know what really happened," Hass Alawadi told U-T San Diego. "We hope for the best, hope for it to come out. I hope they found who did it."

No arrests have been made.

The teenager told police that on the night of the killing, she heard glass break and her mother squeal, but she thought it was a dropped plate. She said she found her mother unconscious 10 minutes later.

Alawadi had suffered at least six blows to the head, possibly caused by a tire iron. She died three days later.

A neighbor reported seeing a man carrying a brown box running from the area of Alawadi's house around the time of the attack.

The victim and her family left Iraq in the early 1990s after a failed Shiite uprising. They lived in Saudi Arabian refugee camps before coming to the U.S., said Imam Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, Mich. Saddam Hussein's troops hanged Alawadi's uncle.

The family arrived in the Detroit area in 1993 and later moved to San Diego. Alawadi was a religious Shiite Muslim who wore a hijab, said Al-Husainy, a family friend. Alawadi's father, Sayed Nabeel Alawadi, is a cleric in Iraq.